The City Council plans to meet next week to try to tackle the issue of spending more than Oceanside makes.

Since consumers began buying less and real-estate values plummeted in the recession, cities have endured depressed revenue from sales and property tax, often dousing balance sheets with red ink as they struggle to keep providing the same level of service from providing residents with parks and recreation to keeping them safe.

How to deal with the budget is one of many points of division along the usual 3-2 split on Oceanside’s City Council. The majority has set out to eliminate the structural deficit — basically having to spend more year after year than the city takes in. Eliminating the ongoing shortfall will almost certainly have some effect on the quality of life in the city.

For some on the council, making those cuts now is a better option than having

significant cash shortages later, forcing them to take more extreme measures. Others are confident that city administrators can continue to find ways, as they have done to this point, to keep providing services with less drastic budget solutions than those up for discussion at a workshop Tuesday.

For the current fiscal year, which began July 1, the city had to close a $3.6 million gap for its $112.4 million general fund budget. That required layoffs at libraries, community centers and senior centers and shuttering city facilities, such as the San Luis Rey Valley Resource Center and the Marshall Street pool.

According to a memo from City Manager Peter Weiss, possibilities for eliminating the structural deficit include making major changes to public safety, cutting salaries for city employees or completely eliminating programs, such as libraries, economic development or parks and recreation.

“This is the most important thing we do as the council of Oceanside, is decide the finances (of the city),” said Councilman Jerome Kern. “We need to close a structural deficit and we need to think about how we do that. ... I want to keep parks and libraries, but we’re going to have to evaluate those.”

Mayor Jim Wood said he is confident the city’s finances will turn around as the economy rebounds, and that the options for eliminating the structural deficit are too extreme.

“My job is to get services to the people of Oceanside and cutting services to police and fire is not the way to do it,” Wood said. “I think the city manager has been pretty good about getting us through year-to-year budgets in this financial crisis. Hopefully we can continue to do this.”

Councilman Jack Feller said he wanted to explore the options presented, which would likely require studies from consultants and evaluating proposals from potential contractors, to see where the city could find savings.

“I love what police and fire do to protect us, but there is a point where you have to figure out what you can afford. And we’re at that point,” Feller said.

One of the options in the city manager’s memo was to look into contracting with the county Sheriff’s Department rather than having Oceanside officers patrol the streets.

“You have a lot of great people in our Police Department, and you want them to be satisfied with their jobs, and you want them to buy in to the future of Oceanside,” Feller said. “That would be a huge change for the city to go to the Sheriff’s Department. We’ve had a police force for more than a 100 years.”

Wood, who was part of the Oceanside police force for 31 years and became a senior investigator before retiring in 2002, said he thinks the Sheriff’s Department would likely field fewer deputies than Oceanside Police Department does officers, and such a change would affect safety in Oceanside.

“We might field 25 officers for a big town like this and the Sheriff’s Department might field five to 10,” Wood said. “We have a lot of issues that can be cut but these are services that citizens expect for their taxes.”

According to city officials’ projections, if regular spending and revenue remain about the same, the city would face a $2 million shortfall in its general fund next fiscal year, which begins in July, and shortfalls of $3.5 million in the 2013-2014 fiscal year, $5.6 million in 2014-2015 and $6.8 million in 2015-2016. The general fund pays for most day-to-day operations, including public safety.

The city would need to spend $4.5 million less per year to eliminate the structural deficit in that time frame, the memo said.

According to a recent study, Oceanside spends more on police services per capita than its neighbors. The services cost on average $283 per resident per year, compared with $262 in Carlsbad and $226 in Escondido. All three have their own police departments.

Vista and San Marcos, which contract with the Sheriff’s Department, spend $177 and $176 per resident annually, the study said.

The city could save about $10 million a year by contracting with the Sheriff’s Department, the memo said.